Hot sex, brutal violence, lingering trauma, and an unflinching depiction of the United States military-intelligence apparatus as evil. Maybe comic-book shows aren’t just for kids anymore!“Gunner,” the fifth episode of The Punisher’s first season, is yet another strong installment, combining the visceral pulp thrills of the action genre with one of the most strident critiques of American power on TV this side of The Americans or Mr. Robot. What’s more, veteran Irish director Dearbhla Walsh (late of Fargo’s amazing and underrated third season) makes it all look good, in settings and situations varied enough for it to almost feel like showing off.

Take the episode’s obvious centerpiece: the pursuit of the Punisher and Gunner, one of his old squad mates, by black-ops assassins sent to eliminate potential witnesses by their former boss Agent Orange. Walsh and writer Michael Jones-Morales set up the cat-and-mouse game, which takes place in the booby-trapped woods surrounding Gunner’s off-the-grid home, like a first-person shooter video game, then turn that framework on its ear. We get a soldier’s-eye-view perspective on the action courtesy of the hit squad’s helmet cams, sure — but they’re not the protagonists, so we watch, frequently through their own eyes, as they’re killed off by Punisher and Gunner one by one. David Lieberman, who tagged along for Frank’s ride to the cabin, relays information to his partner via footage taken by a drone he launches, adding another video-screen element to the proceedings. It’s like watching a Call of Duty playthrough vid where you’re rooting for the players to get taken down. The fact that those players are agents of the state is one of the show’s harshest rebukes of the system that makes such men to date.GIF: Netflix

The episode also excels at showing the aftermath. For an excruciating length of time, we follow Frank and Gunner (an excellent, restrained performance from Jeb Kreager) gasp and stumble through the woods away from the scene of the killings, bleeding from countless, potentially mortal wounds. When Gunner finally collapses, his only concern is that Frank bury his body, implicitly to spare him the grotesque fate of a fellow soldier whose corpse he’d seen their crooked commanders filling with heroin. Frank blows him off, gets up to get help, and quickly collapses himself. When the episode closes, Gunner’s been left behind by Micro, who has no way of finding him and no idea if he’s alive or dead at any rate. No heroic rescues here, no “no man left behind” business. The image of Frank collapsing on the same bed of autumn leaves he’d used elsewhere in the forest to ambush the final enemy soldier in the episode’s most striking image is no accident.GIF: Netflix

Action and aftermath aside, “Gunner” reads like a guide to how to light and frame conversations between two people to make them alive, intense, and engaging. Gunner’s monologue about that mutilated soldier, for instance, is delivered during a long slow zoom in on his face, while Frank (already injured) listens intently. An earlier scene in which Frank and his lawyer Karen Page make contact is shot against a bridge-river-and-skyline backdrop at night, the light on their beautiful faces so luminous that the kiss he unexpectedly plants on her cheek as he leaves seems conjured into existence by the magic in the air.GIF: Netflix

This in turn is like the polar opposite of Karen’s confrontation with Madani as the two women duel for information about Frank and the mysteries surrounding him. Their backdrop is white, harsh, and unforgiving, and they’re kept low in the frame, which makes the exchange feel more tense than it already is.GIF: Netflix

Then there’s that aforementioned sex scene, between Dinah and Billy Russo. Like many of the best sex scenes, there’s something going on besides lust — this is Dinah’s way of reasserting her bodily integrity after the car crash that nearly cost her her life and has left her badly bruised, not to mention drowning her pain with pleasure. But it’s also, you know, hot, as the two characters (played by magnificent human specimens Ben Barnes, who by the way is much much better here than he was with the one-note material given him by Westworld, and Amber Rose Revah) are so eager to get at each other they have sex while still half-dressed.GIF: Netflix

Whether it’s action (of one kind or the other) or aesthetics, The Punisher realizes it can tell its story with more than just mere plot, dialogue, and exposition. Every element of the filmmaking can be made to communicate something about these characters, their world, and the forces driving both.GIF: Netflix